USDA publishes drought coverage by state and beef cow inventory by state, and never multiplies them. Each state’s coverage is weighted by its cows, so a dry state with no cattle counts for little and a dry state with two million counts for a lot. Both halves are published; the multiplication is ours.
Beef cow inventory is USDA NASS, 1 January 2026, held constant across the states — this measures where drought sits against the herd as last counted, not a live headcount. DSCI runs 0–500: each severity band contributes its coverage times its rank, so it carries how much of a state is dry and how badly at once.
| Prior grazing season | State-years | Herd change next Jan | Against the nation that year |
|---|---|---|---|
| No drought | 522 | −0.09% | +0.26% |
| Mild | 205 | −0.30% | +0.22% |
| Moderate | 170 | −0.92% | −0.27% |
| Severe | 102 | −1.05% | −0.22% |
| Extreme | 47 | −2.75% | −2.34% |
For every state and every year since 2001: the mean drought severity across that year’s grazing season (April–September), against the change in that state’s beef cow herd the following January. Drought in July shows up in the cow count six months later, so the comparison is lagged rather than same-year.
The national cattle cycle is removed from the last column. Drought years cluster with liquidation years, so a raw herd change would credit drought with the whole cycle. Each state-year is also measured against the national change in the same year, and it is that column the reading above rests on.
States with fewer than 20,000 beef cows are excluded, because a herd that small swings on rounding. 41 states across 25 years. This is what has happened, not a forecast. It says nothing about any particular drought, and nothing about prices — what cows fetch when they are sold is on the cull cow desk.
| State | DSCI | Any drought | Severe + | Extreme + | Beef cows | Pasture poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arkansas | 405 | 100.0% | 91.3% | 80.4% | 848,000 | 82% |
| Oklahoma | 287 | 99.9% | 66.6% | 26.2% | 1,966,000 | 48% |
| Oregon | 264 | 98.5% | 57.6% | 20.1% | 500,000 | 49% |
| Tennessee | 262 | 91.8% | 59.2% | 38.6% | 818,000 | 47% |
| Wyoming | 256 | 100.0% | 52.0% | 18.6% | 621,000 | 57% |
| Idaho | 222 | 83.8% | 47.9% | 18.8% | 435,000 | 43% |
| Texas | 212 | 89.5% | 43.3% | 10.6% | 4,045,000 | 45% |
| Washington | 184 | 94.2% | 23.6% | 4.4% | 220,000 | 28% |
| Wisconsin | 181 | 57.7% | 43.5% | 22.0% | 275,000 | 24% |
| Minnesota | 172 | 80.0% | 27.0% | 2.5% | 355,000 | 32% |
| Missouri | 169 | 68.4% | 34.6% | 16.6% | 1,806,000 | 39% |
| New Mexico | 166 | 90.0% | 21.5% | 3.2% | 430,000 | 52% |
The U.S. Drought Monitor is a joint product of USDA, NOAA and the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln — USDA is a co-author of it, not the sole publisher, and it is not an AMS market report.
Pasture and range condition and the cattle inventory behind every figure on this page are USDA NASS. Sorted by severity among states that carry cows; the full fifty are in the source.